In pre-knee replacement treatment for arthritis, cartilage replacement is often used on some patients (e.g., younger active patients) as a stopgap measure to delay the need for a complete total knee arthroplasty (a.k.a, total knee replacement). There are numerous possible treatments involving replacement of the cartilage with autografts or with allografts.
One such autograft treatment is the osteoarticular transfer, referred to as OATS, designed to remove cartilage from one area and graft it onto another. One consideration in such treatment is the need to match both cartilage thickness and curvature between donor location and graft location, to ensure an optimal graft. Indeed, with improper graft shapes, there may result some difficulties in aligning the hyaline cartilage in thickness and/or curvature.